During the three long and frightening years since the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the world has heard less and less about this manmade industrial disaster. Money, power, and engineering hubris were put ahead of the lives and health of the people of Japan and the northern hemisphere as radiation releases continue to leave the site and migrate into the environment. Decommissioning and dismantling the reactors will take decades, and complete cleanup is not even possible.

Ralph Nader calls nuclear power and the radioactivity it produces “violent, unnecessary, unsafe, and uninsurable… undemocratic.” And constructing new words that begin with “un,” it is also “unevacuate-able, unfinance-able, unregulatable.”

Naoto Kan, prime minister of Japan when the disaster began states: “Without nuclear power plants we can absolutely provide the energy to meet our demands. Since Fukushima began, Japan has tripled its use of solar energy — a jump in solar power production that is the equivalent of the electricity that would be produced by three nuclear plants… Germany is a model in its commitment to shutting down all its nuclear power plants with all its power supplied by renewable power by 2050. The entire world could do this if humanity really would work together… we could generate all our energy through renewable energy.”

OccupyForum brings together a panel to discuss Fukushima and the alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear power. Josh Wolf, moderator, is a journalist who spent a year in prison for refusing to turn over videos of a 2011 demonstration to police. Umi Hagitani from No Nukes Action is a journalist and anti-nuke activist from Japan, and a key organizer in Japan and the United States. Paul Kangas (Solar One) is a journalist, veteran (Bay of Pigs), private investigator and doctor who has been an activist for solar power and against atomic energy since 1963. In May, Paul is making a film in France and Germany on the growth of solar in Europe to be released in January of 2015. Paul will be discussing the inevitability of solar’s displacement of fossil fuel.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive new international trade pact being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations. If it continues on its current course, the TPP will serve two primary purposes:

1. Making it easier for corporations to shift jobs throughout the world to wherever labor is the most exploited and regulations are the weakest; and

2. Putting checks on democracy at home and abroad by constraining governments’ ability to regulate in the public interest.

The TPP is already being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — but it is also specifically intended as a “docking agreement” that other Pacific Rim countries would join over time, with Japan, Korea, China and others already expressing some interest.

Corporations already cheering the TPP include Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Newscorp, GE and Halliburton. The TPP has been questioned — if not outright opposed — by labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, indigenous and other social justice groups on four continents.

Join us to learn about the current state of negotiations, growing #NoTPP movements across continents, and upcoming opportunities for action to #StopTPP!

Time will be allotted for Q&A and open discussion. Monday March 25, 6:30 – 9 pm.
2017 Mission Street, 2nd Floor #200, near Mission/16th Street BART
Donations to OccupyForum to cover our costs are encouraged; no one turned away!

THE TPP HAS BEEN CALLED “NAFTA ON STEROIDS”

“As a direct result of NAFTA, there are fewer good jobs, more struggling family farms,
less stable food systems, and everyday consumer safety measures are weaker and
social inequality grows. The pact’s intellectual property rules continue to undermine
access to affordable medicine, while its financial service provisions have undermined
banking regulations. NAFTA fueled even more the conditions that precipitated an
economic emigration crisis and exacerbated a false drug war, leading to mass-scale
human rights abuses where tens of thousands of citizens have been the victims. It
has degraded the earth and its ecosystems in numerous ways, including from mining
and other resource extraction projects, and has had pronounced effects on indigenous
peoples’ sovereignty. Subsequent trade agreements have similarly propelled a race to
the bottom in wages, labor rights and environmental protection, as well as deregulation
and privatization, contributing to the worldwide financial and climate crises. Halting
further damage should be a shared priority of our peoples. Instead, because NAFTA has simultaneously redirected wealth and power to elites in each of the countries involved, the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States, among others, are now seeking to expand NAFTA’s trade and investment rules throughout the Pacific Rim in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).”

The weekend before Christmas 2012, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) received a response from the FBI to a FOIA reguest it had filed. The document showed “that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity” according to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of PCJF who went on to say “These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

On February 3rd during the Super Bowl, the United States Federal Reserve was hacked and Anonymous claimed to have published personal info on over 4,000 bank executives. The data was allegedly left “on a misconfigured server (*in Tel Aviv*) and basically open for grabs” the hacking crew Par:AnoIA claimed on it’s website. The Federal Reserve stated that a third-party service was the source of the vulnerability.

Fighting Wall Street Influence

On February 27th, “a total of 14GB of data, code and software related to Bank of America, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, TEKSystems and ClearForest” had been released and days later reports of embedded malware and trojans began to surface. The dump included emails between Bank of America and the company contracted to spy on Anonymous and Occupy activists, Bank of America source code and “a full version of ClearForest’s text analyzing software OneCalais,” used to spy on the activist groups.

Reminicient of when HBGeary boasted of it’s ability to oust Anonymous, the loose-knit collective reacted by releasing embarassing information and launching an online campaign known as Operation Wall Street or #OpWallSt; as follows:

Operation Wall Street : Proposal and Declaration

This is a call to all Anonymous “members” and citizens of the world.

It is obvious that the DoJ and other government entities such as the SEC think that it is more important for them to regulate freedom of speech and information rather than to regulate the blatant organized crimes of the financial market. They persecute people like us, Occupy, and Arron Swartz instead of the Bankers and Wall Street executives and CEOs who have robbed Americans of their hard earned tax dollars.

They hand out billions upon billions of dollars to people who in no way need it yet our conditions for the poor, or even the middle class, have been continually diminishing. The middle class is now almost non existent thanks to the crimes of Goldman Sachs and other firms who have indulged in sinister and criminal practices.

Thousands of innocent and exploited people are being forced into homelessness while these same CEOs and executives make billions in so called profit. They make their fortunes on the shattered lives and broken dreams of people who were nothing more than slightly ignorant when trying to establish a comfortable life for themselves and their family.

It is no longer tolerable that these men and women get to live in luxury and lawlessness while innocent people are pushed into poverty and people who fight for freedom are prosecuted and demonized.

They demonize Occupy, they demonize Anonymous, they demonized Arron Swartz, they demonized Julian Assanage and Bradley Manning. They demonize the very people they force onto the street by calling them incompetent and lazy while calling themselves successful.

They must be stopped. With the recent pathetic assault on Anonymous’ methods by the Bank of America, with the growing despondence of the public. OPERATION WALL STREET, must be launched.

Although the attack on the NYSE was coordinated and acted on, more must be done now! It should be the duty of any Anonymous, any hacker, in solidarity with Occupy, to release the Dox on the CEOs & any and all Executives of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Wells Fargo, Chase, Meryl Lynch, and any other guilty party. Their dox, any and all possible personal information on these people, must be released and made public and spread across the internet as much as possible. The people who have lost their homes and had their lives destroyed deserve to know who it was that did it.

We can no longer let these disgraceful human beings live in luxury and escape the consequences of their actions. People are angry and rightfully so. We are stuck more and more in a state which we can not get out of and which is not our fault. The guilty must pay. OPERATION WALL STREET HAS BEEN PROPOSED, LAID OUT, AND LAUNCHED. We promise not to hurt you once we release your information but we cannot hold the people you screwed over responsible for their actions once they know who you are and where you live. You are not free to escape the consequences of your actions, no one is.

Climate Forum: Fighting Coal Exports in the West

The Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, San Francisco

Forum & Fundraiser for the Coal Export Action

Coal is largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world causing catastrophic climate change.

The Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming has been called “The Saudi Arabia of Coal.”

The coal industry’s domestic markets are drying up with increased regulation on pollutants from coal plants, increased environmental scrutiny and the cost of natural gas. Therefore, with a loss in profits, coal company’s like Arch Coal and Peabody Energy need a new place to sell their dirty black rock out of the Powder River Basin. Asian markets are more than willing buyers of all things coal. Industry just needs an efficient way to get it there. Now the coal industry is lobbying for more outlets for western state coal along the Pacific Coast.

In Montana, Arch Coal is looking to open up more coal mining. The coal giant applied for permits to mine Otter Creek in Eastern Montana.

Across the Northwest, a coalition of environmentalists and landowners have come together to fight back and stop the development of Big Coal’s vital infrastructure. In August at the Coal Export Action, in protest of the mining of Otter Creek, 23 courageous people from all over the west were arrested sitting-in in the Montana state capital. Now those activists are going on trial to press the climate issue in the courts.

Join us for a forum and fundraiser for the Coal Export Action.

Event to include:-Reportback and panel on Western Coal Exports-Amazing videos-Snacks

Too Big to Fail

A 99-minute HBO film (2012)

Directed by Curtis Hanson

With Paul Giamatti, Ed Asner, James Woods and William Hurt

Based on Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves (2009), a book by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The film depicts the financial meltdown of 2008, particularly the role of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Upcoming Events

The Berkeley post office is under contract to be sold. There will be a rally at the post office on Allston Way on Nov 1 at 11am. Please bring tents and occupiers. More to come as this situation develops. And please spread the word. http://www.savethepostoffice.com The occupation of the Berkeley … Continue reading →

The Berkeley post office is under contract to be sold. There will be a rally at the post office on Allston Way on Nov 1 at 11am. Please bring tents and occupiers. More to come as this situation develops. And please spread the word. http://www.savethepostoffice.com The occupation of the Berkeley … Continue reading →

The Outreach Group’s mission is to distribute information from many Occupy related groups and encourage participation. Available literature ranges over many important issues including finance, politics, environment, education, capitalism, healthcare, war, spying, human rights, and more. Meets inside near the water fall.

The Berkeley post office is under contract to be sold. There will be a rally at the post office on Allston Way on Nov 1 at 11am. Please bring tents and occupiers. More to come as this situation develops. And please spread the word. http://www.savethepostoffice.com The occupation of the Berkeley … Continue reading →

The Berkeley post office is under contract to be sold. There will be a rally at the post office on Allston Way on Nov 1 at 11am. Please bring tents and occupiers. More to come as this situation develops. And please spread the word. http://www.savethepostoffice.com The occupation of the Berkeley … Continue reading →

The Berkeley post office is under contract to be sold. There will be a rally at the post office on Allston Way on Nov 1 at 11am. Please bring tents and occupiers. More to come as this situation develops. And please spread the word. http://www.savethepostoffice.com The occupation of the Berkeley … Continue reading →